Rebecca West | Criticism

The Court and the Castle is a series of critical observations about various literary works held loosely together by a concern with how great writers from Shakespeare to Kafka have treated the problem of salvation. Miss West begins with the interesting theory that the king in Shakespeare's plays is fated to misuse the power he possesses, yet the usurper who stands ready to unseat him is invariably evil. Noting that this paradox of power does not seem relevant to actual political life, Miss West confesses that she would not be at all surprised if Shakespeare thought of his kings as symbols of the will, of their courts as symbols of personality, and of the usurpers as symbols of the will's futile attempts to reform itself. She seems unaware that the pattern she has observed is a form of the institution of the dying god described in The Golden...